Tips on Finding a Venue

Finding a Venue

Reserve your bake sale location early! Narrow down the possible sites, get on the phone or visit, and get the necessary permissions. Then the exciting and fun stuff can begin.

Possible locations include community centers, public squares, shopping centers, strip malls, pet supply stores, and theatres or sports arenas before or during an event. Participating school groups and religious groups may want to hold their bake sale in their respective schools and places of worship. Craft fairs and festivals are another possible place for a vegan bake sale, although you often have to register early.

Some open markets or farmers markets will let you hold a bake sale on or near the premises. Markets can bring a lot of foot traffic but bureaucracy, fees, and requirements vary widely. Do your homework as early as possible.

Some food-coops will be amenable to a bake sale.

Do you work in a large office building or live in an apartment complex with lots of units? Check with the building manager to see if you can set up a bake sale in the lobby, or in front of the building or in the courtyard.

Art galleries and local performance halls may lend or rent you space for your bake sale.

Are you in a band or other performing group? You and/or your fans might be able to hold bake sales at your shows.

If proceeds from your bake sale will be going toward a local charity, you may want to find out if anyone at the charity knows where bake sales for the group have been held before. In many cases, the charity owns or is located in a building, and it might make sense to hold the bake sale there. For example, if the logistics work out, you could have a bake sale in front of the local animal shelter.

You can hold a bake sale at your home, or lemonade stand-style at a prominent spot in your neighborhood.

You could combine a vegan bake sale and yard sale. This could be on your lawn, or you could volunteer to hold a vegan bake sale at a neighbor’s yard sale.

One way to get ideas for possible bake sale locations in your area is to enter the name of your community followed by “bake sale” (in quotes) in an online search engine. You may need to also enter a state or some other qualifier to narrow the search. Try “bakesale” as well.

Call your city’s parks and recreation department (or the closest thing to that); ask them where you can hold a bake sale. They may be very helpful.

If your request to use a facility is denied, it may not hurt to ask the representative with whom you’re talking for advice on alternate places.

If you reserved your spot well in advance, check back about three to four weeks before the event, to confirm.

It may take an hour or more to physically set up your bake sale, and nearly that long to pack up afterward. Factor this into the number of hours for which you reserve your spot.

Do you have a web site or blog? Consider a blog bake sale, in which a) people donate baked goods that they pledge to make and ship, b) people bid on the donated baked goods. Do an online search for “blog bake sale” or “blogger bake sale.” You can partner with other bloggers for a multi-blogger vegan bake sale.